A crack team of the finest NMA ninjas, disguised as respectable citizens, managed to infiltrate Bethesda brainwashing booth, witness Fallout 3 PowerPoint presentation, and even ask our old buddy Pete Hines a few questions:

Fallout 3 looks like a well-produced, very pretty, very fun game that'll provide quite a few people with a lot of hours of enjoyment. However, I don't think it's anything more than a very pretty and fun game.
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The only times this game really shines is when it is copying from the originals directly. The moments of inspiration outside of that are rare, limited to a few jokes and the Protectron's excellent design.

But what does that mean? Pretty much that we're looking at a pretty bland, uninspired game here, and that people expecting the next big break-through in RPGs or gaming in general to come from here should probably look the other way. And who knows how it'll hold up against competing RPG or RPG-like games in late 2008? Only time will tell. But suffice it to say that despite flashes of brilliances, I'm not overly impressed by this game, and hate to see a franchise tag that once stood for being so different now applied to something that is so humdrum and potentially dull.

And here is a snipet from the interview:

Will you be able to finish the game without killing anyone?

We don't know yet. We're trying to make it so that you have options to use stealth or dialogue. The lead designer of Fallout 3 is Emil Pagiarulo, who worked on the Dark Brotherhood questline in Oblivion and on the Thief games. He has a lot of experience with using stealth to solve problems. But obviously, when you're talking about supermutants, dialogue really isn't a viable option. So I can't really say whether or not you can finish the game without killing anyone, but implementing alternative paths is very important for us.